Category: Aging

Image from The Empathy Project at Seattle Art Museum 11/2018

12/31/2018

We arrive on this earth, learn things, affect people, people affect us, eat too much or too little, hate ourselves, work on loving ourselves, work on not hating others, lose people, gain new people, worry about money, and kids, our parents and siblings, and friendships, have some laughs here and there, and then we die, we are gone. At some point, it is over, just over. We make up ideas about where we go when we die and typically think it will be much better or much worse than life here on earth. I think we just die. We leave energy behind, we leave memories and that is all we really know.

Death seems to happen by mistake, an anomaly in our world. We all know that we die, but I am a member of the club that pretends that it will really never happen to me. Or it will happen in a way that is swift so I barely know it has happened. It will happen as I imagine when I am 100 and still have my wits about me. I will be sleeping and my heart will fail. My imaginings are based on facts; My mother lived to 94, her sister to 92 and her cousin lives on at 101 about to be 102.

When death happens we land in the country of disbelief and say this wasn’t supposed to happen, especially when the person seems too young to die or cut off from doing something that we think is important or it is just someone we love spending time with and it feels like they are taken from us.

As I don’t have a ritual for death, there are the memories that I want to collect up, like a hoarder. The Day of the Dead ritual in Coco seems good. Creating an altar of things that help me remember my friend Paula, my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the friend that died when we were both 19, the friend of my daughter’s who also died when they were 19. I still carry around my mother’s ashes in a shoe box, fitting for who she was, waiting for the perfect moment and place to put them. I think of somewhere for the ashes, weigh in on it, and, so far, nowhere ends up saying, yes, leave her here, with us, where she will be taken care of. Maybe a shoebox is the perfect place. It was not uncommon for my mom and I to joke about her and Imelda Marcos. Not about shared politics, but about too many shoes.

This past month I sat and watched my friend wither away like a dying, brittle vine, still clinging to the trellis it once had adorned with blossoms. She had stomach cancer but told us she had breast cancer because that is what she wanted to believe. It was part of her wish to believe she could recover from this by diet and positive thinking. By the time she had told me, and a few other friends, she had had this cancer for a year. We learned of it when the cancer was in the process of attacking her entire body. In the end, it left her with a writhing ocean of an open wound weeping from her chest. It was as if her insides had become a riptide of pus trying to break free from her cancer-riddled body, just as she hoped to do, break free. Prior to hospitalization, a nurse suggested wearing a Kotex as a bandage on her leaking breast, which she did, bringing both of us to uproarious of laughter. The whole time we joked, I had no idea she was dying and maybe it was more fun that way. It was just a silly bandage that would be removed one day when she was “better”.

The last time I saw her, she was in a baseline assisted living home where she was receiving Hospice care, at least when the nurses chose to follow Hospice’s instruction or when Hospice was there itself. She looked kind of like a person I once knew, but as she became ever more gaunt, she was a sliver of who she once was. Over a months time, she became an empty body, with blue eyes that moved and had moments, flashes of recognition, and then vacant. She died on December 24, 2018, at too young of an age, taking secrets with her.

Each day, after leaving the vigil of sitting with Paula, my thoughts would drift off to how will this happen for me. Who will be with me? I would like my kids to be with me, but wonder if one could stand the process and if the other will be too busy. I carry a fantasy that my kids will be there like I was for my mother, but that fantasy includes things as if I were like my mother and my kids were like me. But, in fact, my mother and I were always pretty different. I mean it was clear we had a special bond, and we were related, but I live my life differently than she lived hers. I attend to my fears differently, I attend to my hopes differently. So to think I will have what my mother had in her ending years, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The last time I saw Paula she looked a lot like an alien with a small diminishing body and huge eyes. I felt cliche when my mind went off to wondering if this is what life comes to and then wondering if am I doing my life right. Paula died much as she lived. In the end, she was as worried about her finances as ever, though her worries were unfounded, as they always had been. She scrabbled around with friendships and kept secrets or half-truths how she was actually related to certain people who she spent time with. Early in my first visit, at some point in her morphine stupor, she made a comment about looking fat. The only thing that could possibly suggest fat, was her cancer inflamed arm. Even on her death bed, her eating disorder was alive and well. Her concern and fear of being fat was evidence that our craziness follows us to the end. So if this is the case, I deeply want to unhook my deep, low self-esteem issues now. I would like my death bed to be free of the ailments of untruths about who I actually am.

So what am I doing with my life? How cruel have I been? What can I do about it now? When do I just let go and be kind, do what I need to do, do what I want and brush off the cruel things said to me, by me and others?? Get the tougher skin my mother had wished for me. I find all my actions are directed towards freeing myself to be present, being kind and generous, uncluttered by my lower needs of inclusion, fear of being left out, needing to defend myself, needing recognition. I find I am driven to live from a higher place than my ego and I fail at all of this a lot.

After watching Paula, I hope I get there. I think I want this more than anything other than for my children and their loved ones to be happy, healthy and feel safe.

For Paula and Our Friendship… With love from your Buddha Buddy and Henry

“If death is certain and the time of death uncertain, what do I do? How do I live? What matters most to me in the time that is left?” ~Stephen Batchelor

The First Person Blog morphed into a Third Person Blog ( Both will still be working Blogs from Different View Points) For Third Person Story see: “Her Name”

The Personal Stuff stays right here.

“You are a guiding light for us all, a symbol that (at this entrenched age where we get more and more attached to our routines) change is liberating and courage abounds. Thanks for holding that adventurer archetype!” ~From A friend on my journey

“The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate to the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and everywhere.” (from Carl Jung’s 1936 lecture on “The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,” Collected Works, Vol. 9.i, pars. 87-110.

The friend’s comment made Nellie pause and scrunch up her forehead. She did not own being a guiding light for anyone. And what does getting older mean? She was puzzled by the idea that we become “entrenched”. It was hard for her to wrap her thinking around becoming entrenched or held by routines that go unexamined.

Entrenched brought to mind her fight with the idea of “hunkering down”. She bristled at the concept, a concept that people, she knew, only wanted to hunker down. It just made her feel squirmy, depressed, stuck, enclosed. It made her feel as if she was curled up with a blanket pulled taught over her head and she was pretty sure she would never, ever emerge again. In fact, she was certain that was true. It brought to mind a life sentence of submergence, possible severe depression and in this case, the opposite of freedom and therefore the opposite of Nellie’s life

She knew life was that hard, from too much experience, and she was always trying to find ways to make life easier. She was a seeker, a healer and a Scorpio who wanted to understand the dark, death, life and The Mystery.

“In the sweet territory of silence, we touch the mystery. It’s the place of reflection and contemplation, and it’s the place where we can connect with the deep knowing, to the deep wisdom way.” Angeles Arrien

Hunkering down made Nellie feel as if she would be surrendering to the difficulty of living and she, the Mountain Climbing Goat Woman, Capricorn rising, was not interested in succumbing, or surrendering.

She had so many questions about aging. Do people just get tired of how much work life is, so a routine is something they don’t have to think about? Do people decide that sticking to all that is familiar is the best bet, no more adventures into life, because who knows what could happen? Or is it just about our beliefs and the stories we tell to make sure our beliefs are real. Perhaps it is simply the character we come into the world with. Or perhaps something about karma?

Nellie could feel her brain darting around to comprehend this aging business. She grew up with Aquarius parents, at one time young socialist, always interested in the new, the different, the interesting, conforming enough to live very comfortably and generously, which suited Nellie well. Among the things that made up family life were jokes made about aging bodies but always there was due respect for elders, their wisdom, gifts, and talents. There was something of a tongue and cheek acceptance about aging and criticism for those complaining too much. So watching people age in her world, was not about slowing, hunkering or being entrenched. Nellie learned that aging was yet another adventure; the wrinkles spoke wisdom and sometimes there were difficult, challenging and upsetting times, sometimes heart warming, sweet and loving experiences.

Nellie was indeed an adventurer, mostly solo, and sometimes a person might come along for a bit. Her dog, Henry or The Mr. was always with her. Her life journey was never about safe and this current stretch was a lot about the opposite of safe. Nellie knew she had a propensity for wanting to do things differently. Her character served her well this way. She wanted adventures, she loved statements like Life is Art because it suggested embedding creativity into every moment of every breath. With this, she was reminded to keep things sacred, stand outside, watch with new eyes, breathe, move to get a new angle or perspective and let the moment change her, even if for one second. And that brief moment could be an adventure.

The forethought, which many people were naturally inclined to have, often eluded Nellie, which made her life both rich with adventure, including some necessary and some not so necessary drama. When she was younger, she thought she should do something just because it scared her. Now, she does things a bit less recklessly, but still trying things that aren’t about staying or doing the same as what she has known.

Nellie was a young girl when her family took the 2-3 hour drive to Lowden State Park, Il where her father snapped photos of her, her mother, brother, and cousin at the Black Hawk Statue. Of that trip, she remembers being with her family, enjoying her father’s sense of adventure, the cigar smoke blown into the backseat which made her vaguely nauseous, the cool jackets her mom had made for her and her cousin offering the cozy comfort Nellie tookin wearing what her mother had made. And there was the angst Nellie remembers over wanting to play with her brother but thinking he just didn’t like her all that much.

Life, then, was hard for Nellie. And, why was that? What happened? What didn’t happen? Was this story necessary to tell again? Really?